


Tell Me What You Want To Hear

by ecstasyseeker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, I'm New Around These Parts, Just Playing It Safe, Loss of Limbs, Maybe smoothed over with a dollop of fluff at the end? Maybe?, Miscarriage, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Potential Trigger Warning for Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Protective Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 13:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17101598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecstasyseeker/pseuds/ecstasyseeker
Summary: Taking place a little while after the events of the imaginary Avengers: Endgame (except that diner scene, because Nat has grown out red roots and WTF does that mean??) that exists in my brain, Natasha is caring for Steve after the loss of his leg. It's tough. There's tension. But there's also love.





	Tell Me What You Want To Hear

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I've been writing creatively for years, but this is the first time I've worked up the courage to let anyone else see my painful angsty ship bullshit. I should note that I have literally never had a ship wherein I did not imagine a pregnancy/child storyline (or many) for them, even if one or both of the characters are quite infertile. I don't know why. I blame Shonda Rhimes for that (and everything). 
> 
> This title is a lyric from Secrets by OneRepublic, a song I think fits Steve and Natasha, and this story, quite well. I don't own that song or these characters. Just a keyboard and a lot of feelings. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Natasha winces as she hears the clatter from the bathroom, the sound a deafening cacophony in the quiet of their little, currently shared apartment. She halts between plates she’s rinsing, listening for a follow-up noise. 

“Steve? You okay?” She calls after a few silent moments pass, already knowing the answer. 

When she doesn’t get a response, it confirms that he requires her help, he’s just too stubborn to admit it. Stubborn and depressed and oh, so angry. He’s angry at the universe, for presenting him with this horror of a reality. He’s angry at his body, for forsaking him. 

Mostly, though, he’s angry at her for allowing Shuri and the exceedingly qualified team of Wakandan surgeons to amputate most of his leg after the second battle. 

It’s been almost a month since the surgery, and simply-put, recovery has been hell. All the blinding, radiant optimism that Steve once had is now gone, seemingly evaporated into thin air and replaced by dark and empty solemness that bleeds from each day to the next. 

Natasha has been staying with him around the clock as his caregiver, because although he wishes he didn’t need one, he does. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to be the patient, he spent the better part of his childhood sick in bed, it’s just that he loathes it. After Erskine’s serum, he never had to feel weak or helpless, he could use his body to perform acts of heroism for others instead of wasting away with a harrowing fever and cough. However, it isn’t lost on him that this situation is largely different, and despite Natasha’s gentle words and soothing touches and everyone’s reminders that it will get better, he feels as though he’s slipping back into the person he hasn’t seen in the mirror for seventy-something years. 

Plain and simple, he needs the caretaker. He is just now learning how to find his balance in order to get himself from one side of the room to the other, even with his crutches. Not to mention the nightmares. He needs Natasha. 

It’s not that she minds. As tough as it is to see him like this, she’d much rather spend her time with a melancholy and distraught Steve than go on missions for what’s left of SHIELD or work with what’s left of the Avengers. Looking into her toolbox, she sees leftovers. That’s what her options consist of, broken and tattered pieces of things that were once whole. Some part of her, deep within her soul where she still allows herself to be optimistic, hopes she can help Steve feel whole again. She hopes he doesn’t feel or leftover, even though she’s nearly certain he does. 

More than that, she wants to support him in his time of brokenness and desperation. She feels that she owes it to him, for somewhat causing this. 

After one additional moment of silence from Steve’s direction, Natasha flicks off the water and makes the short trek to the bathroom door, “Steve? Do you need help?” She presses her ear to the door after knocking softly and hears a distressed whimper. That’s all the answer she needs. That’s also how a great deal of their communication has happened recently. 

They’d never really needed words to communicate before, always being so in tune to one another, but she never thought their partnership would be reduced to this. She never thought they’d have to face something this difficult and painstaking for the both of them. After they’d started sleeping together during their time as fugitives, that small part of her soul where Natasha was bright and not so cynical grew larger. Just by crossing that line in her relationship with Steve, years of Red Room and SHIELD training that built up walls that made her appear fearless and painless came undone. At first, it made her uneasy, the fact that she could trust someone as wholly and completely as she did with him, that she could let someone so honest and pure into her heart, but she eventually grew to accept it. She grew to love it, to love him. She also grew into the realization that he might not be as pure as the legend she’d heard growing up made him out to be, but still just as brave and beautiful. She let him in, and he inspired her. So, something as devastating as this took a greater toll on her than she ever could have anticipated. 

She opens the door to see him crumpled in the corner where the wall meets the bathtub. It appears that he’s fallen while attempting to use the bathroom standing up, and his crutches are bent under him, so mangled that she knows they’re no longer usable. His eyes are glued to the floor, but they aren’t really looking at anything.

“We talked about this,” She says gently, no hint of condescension or deprecation or pity in her voice. Only genuine concern and delicate affection. 

He’s managed to pull his lightweight athletic shorts back up, but there’s a puddle underneath him on the floor and she knows he’s peed himself. 

That’s not the only moisture, though, there are trails of it leading down his face and dripping off his chin. He’s crying.

“I‘m sorry,” He whispers brokenly, his face fracturing a bit with the words. She crouches next to him, laying a hand on his shoulder in attempt to provide some comfort. 

“It’s all right. Come on, can you get up on the bathtub?” 

He sort of can. Using the wall and herself for support, he rises enough to sit on the side of the tub, immediately diverting his eyes from his leg. She looks down and sees why. 

The clip that normally secures his pant leg closed has come undone, leaving his thigh, that now tapers off a bit below his pelvis, exposed. He can see it, the place where his knee used to be. He doesn’t want to. 

Natasha notices this, of course, and quickly brushes the fabric over it again. Then, she disappears for a moment, into the bedroom to get a new pair of shorts. 

When she returns, she helps him stand, pulls down the soiled shorts he’s currently wearing, sits him back down to step out of them and into the fresh ones, then up again to pull them up. It’s a sort of routine they’ve adopted over the past month, and he’s starting to be able to pull his pants up himself, but not now. Not when he’s this fragile. 

Then, she loops his arm over her shoulders as she always does when he’s without his crutches, and starts hobbling with him out of the bathroom. 

“The mess...” Steve says, gesturing with his eyes to the puddle of offending liquid on the floor, his voice gruff and hardly more than a whisper. 

“I’ll get it later,” Natasha absolves softly, solely focusing on getting Steve elsewhere safely. 

Not many people would describe the legendary Black Widow as being consistently accepting and tender in her words and actions, but Steve would. Although he can’t find the words to say it, to thank her for being so kind to him when he’s so engulfed in the suffering of slow recovery and the underlying bitterness towards her, he appreciates it. And she knows he does. Again, they don’t always need to speak in order to communicate. 

As they move across the living room towards the couch, he breaks the silence that has once again settled between them. 

“Why?” He grunts through gritted teeth. 

Not this again. He’s brought it up a few times, the question. Why? Why did she do this? Why did she let this happen? Still, hoping to avoid it, she feigns ignorance. 

“‘Why’ what?” 

“Why did you let them do this to me?” 

He doesn’t expect her to answer. She never does. He thinks it’s because she doesn’t have a reason. 

She sets him down on the couch and disappears once again, this time to get his spare crutches from the closet to replace the ones he just broke. 

He doesn’t expect her to answer, but he presses her anyway. 

“Why did you do it?” He asks a bit more firmly when she returns, propping the crutches against the end of the couch. 

“Steve...” She really doesn’t want to go there. 

“Tell me, damn it! I want a reason!” He raises his voice to a louder volume than they usually talk, his words thick with vitriol, then continues, “I named you as my power of attorney because I thought I could trust you to make the right decision in a situation like this! I thought you would know what to do, what I would want! But no. You gave them the go ahead to cut off my leg.” 

“Are you done?” She asks, losing her patience, as she turns towards back towards the kitchen and the dishes she had been washing before he fell. 

“How could you do it?!” He’s shouting now, his voice loud and rough, and she stops, bracing a hand on the edge of the counter and fixing her eyes on one of the cabinets, “How could you, when you knew how important it was?! When you knew how much of my self worth came from my physical abilities?!” 

“I—“ She starts. 

“Why did you do it?!” He interrupts her angrily. 

“Because I was pregnant!” 

There, she said it.

Steve stops, automatically taken aback and stunned with shock. He swallows, albeit with difficulty. When he finds his voice again, it’s softer, quieter. Tentative. Almost a whisper. 

“What?” 

“I was pregnant. You were the father, and I needed you to be alive.”

She pauses, finally shifting her body to look at him again. He can’t think of anything to say. Eventually, she gathers her words and reluctantly, she continues with her explanation.

“I thought there was going to be a child, one that needed two parents —because God knows neither of us had that— and we would need to lean on each other, both of us, to raise that child. I know how much defending the planet meant to you, I do, but you were going to die. If that leg didn’t come off, it would have killed you. I care about you, Steve. I love you. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let you die when there was a way to save you and I— I needed you more than you needed your leg, and I thought you could find worth in other things... like being a father. But, I miscarried before you even woke up from surgery, so I guess I jumped the gun,” Natasha’s voice fractures a bit at the last sentence, her composure crumbling as she tightens her hand’s grip on the counter.

Steve couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even register what she was saying. All he could do was sit and stare at her, futilely attempting to digest this information. She’d been pregnant? That’s why she did it? They were going to have a child? No, they weren’t. Not anymore. She miscarried. She’s been dealing with this grief all alone? 

“Nat...” Her name seems to be the only word he can find. 

“I guess your fucking super soldier sperm is strong enough to get a barren woman pregnant, but the whole carrying-to-term part is on me. You’re wallowing in your sorrow about your body failing you... my body failed me too. And I know you’re grieving because you lost a part of you, but so did I. You might not be able to fight again, but Shuri is already working on your prosthetic. You’ll walk again. Your life isn’t over. That... the baby...” Her voice breaks a little around that last word, as if she is having a hard time pronouncing it, “It’s not coming back. It’s never coming back,” She pauses for a moment, inhaling deeply and biting her tongue to keep herself from falling apart, “You ask me why I did it, that’s why. You ask me why I stay here and take care of you, it’s because I’m more involved than you probably thought.” 

Several more moments pass, Steve still trying and failing to process the weight of what she is saying. Natasha exhales, letting some of the accumulated tension free. The relief is almost overwhelming. She’s been nearly buckling under the heaviness of this secret for so long. Although confessing was difficult, she feels liberated. 

“I’m so sorry, Nat. God, I’ve been so selfish, I— I don’t— ... There was a baby?” He asks, tears filling his eyes once again as his forehead crumples in distress. For the first time since the amputation, the tears aren’t for himself. 

“Yeah,” She says, her voice cracking as her eyes well up too.

He fidgets, trying to get his crutches and go to her, but before he can get up and probably hurt himself, she’s coming to him. Sitting on the sofa next to him. Allowing him to wrap his arms, still so stalwart and strong despite the trauma, around her. 

“I’m so sorry,” Steve whispers through his tears, pressing a kiss to her hair and closing his eyes. 

“Yeah, me too,” Natasha replies before allowing her emotions to take over, shaking lightly as long-stored tears spill down her face, and it’s the first time she’s allowed herself to fall apart. She’s been so strong for him, so steady, so supportive. She hasn’t even given herself the time to cope with her loss. Their loss. 

Later, she would argue that it was only nine weeks along, it was nothing worth grieving, nothing at all. But they both knew that wasn’t true. It was everything. It was a beacon of hope, a new beginning, for both of them. It was a lifeline that could have pulled Steve out of his darkness. Maybe it still could be. 

For a few hours, they simply sit together, lamenting over what could’ve been had things worked out differently. Just two part-time heroes, full-time humans feeling what they feel and holding each other. Partially because they need to, partially because they don’t have anything better to do. 

Even when it seems like they’ve run out of tears, and their faces dry into ruddy, streaky messes, they don’t stray from their tentative yet warm embrace. This is the most intimate physical contact they’ve had since the surgery, and they’re both taking it in wholeheartedly, like a man would drink from a well after being stranded in the desert. 

After a while, Natasha finally has a technical reason to get up, and as much as she’s enjoying the sensation of Steve’s hand rubbing soothingly across her upper back, she figures she should. 

“I should probably get dinner started,” She says, pulling back a bit and fussing with her dry cheeks, her voice hoarse from all the crying.

“Need any help?” Steve offers, and she’s surprised, but isn’t about to turn down an opportunity for him to do something with how rarely that has been occurring recently. 

“Sure. You can chop the vegetables. It’s one less thing I can screw up, anyway.” Natasha quips, and he smiles, and she smiles right back because it’s the first time she’s seen his eyes flash like that, with amusement, something positive, in what feels like forever. With that, something in the back of her mind notes that there’s been a lot of firsts like that in the past few hours. 

Whatever else they did today— a fall, a confession, a good old-fashioned cry— they had a breakthrough. The sun was rising again. 

The secret she had been so reluctant to tell him, for fear that it would break him, ended up being what put things in perspective. What kick-started the healing process on the inside, the one the serum couldn’t touch. Whatever else they felt in that moment, they felt better. Whatever else experiencing and being honest about this loss meant, it meant uniting them in a time as trying as this one. 

Whatever else would come their way, whatever else the gained or lost, they could weather the storm together. They could and they would, because no matter what, they had each other. 

Nothing could change that, and nothing else really mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Do I think James Rogers is gonna pop into the MCU? No. Can I dream about it? Hell yeah. 
> 
> If you'd like to leave a comment with some feedback for a terrified first time author, that would be greatly appreciated. Seriously, I'd be forever indebted to you. 
> 
> Thanks for stopping by!


End file.
